Reflections of Envy
by Rhel
Summary: A first person reflective from the view of Envy. Please review. SPOILERS for end of the anime series.
1. Part 1

I wrote this story several monthes ago - but I still find it wonderful. Let's just say, Interview With The Vampire is good for one's first-person writing skills. I may or may not continue this later, but I hope you like what I have so far.

Setting: Before Series, may go through/after series. Basically, a first-person reflective by Envy. Spoilers, obviously.

Disclaimer: I own nothing but a pair of socks, don't sue me.

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My first memory was that of my father. He had caring, but sad eyes, and a beard I could never quite comprehend. It was bushy, yet sleek and thin like a seal's fur. His hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail that let his hair fall over his collar in a golden torrent. Whenever I spoke, his honey-colored eyes would always look through me, and when I paused for a reply it was never more than a few choice words such as "yeah", "mm-hmm", and "alright". Perhaps that was where it all started.

I asked my mother frequently why he didn't spend more time with me, why he didn't play with me, and why he rarely was seen at all. She would always hush me, then make me feel inferior in her own special way by saying something along the lines of "he's working, help me jar these beets". I really hated beets, and I really hated them. Them, always doing something more important than spending time with me. My father practically lived in his basement, and Mother refused to tell me what, exactly, Daddy did for a living. What ever he did, we were extremely well off financially. In terms of social health, we might as well have been ghosts.

I was just a young boy, no older than five, when my father began to take "trips". My mother would sometimes cry at night, but not as much as I did. Part of me suspected he would abandon us one day, the other part knew he already had.

At the age where most young boys go out and play with balls, or sticks, or _friends_, I was stuck inside with Mommy Dearest. When I would ask to go outside, she would distract me with something. A magic trick, or a scientific experiment would hold me long enough until it was time for dinner, or bed. When I did get to go outside, it was only in the confines of our estate, for we didn't live in a house, we lived in a _mansion_. Sometimes I would spend my time staring out of the gates that held me trapped there, or watching the birds, wishing I too could have wings to fly from here.

One day my mother went to the store. She thought she could trust the housemaids to keep an eye on me for the twenty minutes it would take her to fetch some candles. It was a game of mine to distract the maids long enough to get into my father's secret basement. All the other times, my mother would catch me as I reached for the door handle; but this time, she wasn't here to stop me. I tugged on the rough door latch, only to find it locked. My plan was foiled for the moment, but I began to scour my father's room looking for a key. And I found it, the extra key, in a pair of his old slippers that were keenly hidden under the bed. The key was the same rough brass as the door handle, and when I fit it into the tiny keyhole I heard an encouraging click. The wooden door swung open slowly to reveal a short flight of rickety wooden stairs.

The air of my father's secret spot made me cough. On several desks were giant mounds of dusty books, and a large contraption with many tubes and flasks. It bubbled quietly, releasing a funny-smelling odor into the air. On the wall next to the desk was a row of shelves lined with labeled bottles and jars. At the time, I was unable to read the neatly scrawled labels, but it enticed my curiosity. I was soon climbing from chair, to desk, to shelf. My motor skills were not great, even for a child, as I rarely exercised or ate my vegetables, so several of the jars tumbled to the floor, shattering into thousands of pieces and splaying their contents all over the stone floor.

I winced, and looked to survey the damage. Any thought of consequence escaped my mind at that moment, for on the floor was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was silver like my mother's earrings, yet it glistened in a way only liquid could. I climbed down from the desk, and dropped to the floor next to the sparkling object. My brown shoes crushed the broken glass even further, but that was not important. I squatted down; getting my face close to the object without putting my hands on the ground, for I knew that glass would cut me. I poked the silver thing with my index finger, and I found that the round stone like quality it had portrayed was a façade, as it jiggled like nothing I had ever seen. I giggled as I poked the mystery liquid-stone, but that soon got boring. I scooped it up into one of my clumsy, chubby hands and it wiggled happily. I tried to identify the strange object by smelling it, and it tickled my nose. I began to feel light headed, but the absent-mindedness made me smile. This left me with more questions, such as: What does it taste like?

If I had known what that little blob would do to me, I would have never investigated my father's laboratory. For what must have been days I was in bed. I couldn't concentrate for more than a minute, though my mother tried to make me, my lips felt numb and my stomach kept bunching into a ball of pain. My mother was yelling at me, "What did you do? What did you do?" But I couldn't seem to talk right; all I could do was moan unintelligibly. My beautiful little toy was killing me.

It was nighttime when I last awoke. I could barely move my eyes to see the darkness out my window. I knew, though I was only a small boy, that I would die. My only comprehensible thought was, If Daddy were here, if Daddy cared, if Daddy hadn't abandoned me, I wouldn't die. If he were here, I couldn't die. He always made me such magical medicines whenever I was sick, but this time he wouldn't. I cried out, a terrible scream that still echoes in my own mind. I screamed until my lungs gave out, my muscles so weakened I couldn't even move. But Daddy wasn't there.

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Please review ; 


	2. Part 2

Part 2, shorter, but it felt like a good place to stop.

Disclaimer: I still don't own anything. Try again later.

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The strangest thing happened next. I awoke. My eyes wouldn't open, perhaps I didn't even have eyes, but I could smell. I smelled what seemed to be burnt flesh, and _him_. I smelled _that man_ and his specific perfume. He had come too late, and I had died, but here I was alive enough to smell. I think I screamed, but I could not hear it, for perhaps I had no ears. I had a mouth, and I had a nose, and that was all I could feel besides pain.

Someone picked me up, I could tell by the air rushing past my mouth that they were running with me. There must have been two of them, by smell I could recognize them as Mother and Father. One of them stuffed something in my toothless mouth, and then closed it, forcing me to swallow. It was cold, and a chill ran through me. Several more of these mystery things followed before I noticed a change. I began to grow ears. I could hear my parents' heavy breathing and swift talking, but it sounded so far away. I also heard the strangest squealing and crying. Was that _me_? I fell unconscious again.

When I awoke the next time it felt like I had slept a lifetime. I might have, for I had no knowledge of time. I had eyes again, and teeth, and a tongue, but I felt so awful. Not weak, no, my body was functioning at top condition, but my mind made my new eyes focus and unfocus with giant spasms of pain. I heard my mother as she came. My hearing had become sharper than I had remembered it, but it also hurt to hear so sharply. I winced in pain as my mother shoved more of these mystery things down my throat. My new tongue tasted them; they tasted like cherries and metal. I opened my eyes and tried to focus. Whatever they were, they were red and there were lots of them. My mother forced me to down them all before she would let me loose.

She helped me to a sitting position, and I got a good look at her. She had changed so much in the time I was asleep. The woman who sat before me was nothing like my mother. My mother's hair had been brown and long, but now it was shorter, and blonde. Her eyes had changed color, and she had grown plumper. But I knew it was she, for her smell was unmistakable.

We didn't exchange words until the next day. She had made me go straight back to sleep, and I awoke to find her sitting at the foot of the bed. My surroundings were not my childhood room, but I seemed to be in a similar style manor. The blanket on the bed where I lay had splatters of blood and what appeared to be pieces of the red things she had fed me. My very body felt foreign to me, and my mind nagged at me to find a mirror as soon as possible. She grabbed me by my shoulder, and told me a fantastical story. Had her eyes not been so serious, I wouldn't have believed her.

She said I had died, and she mourned me for days before my father had come home. He did not mourn me, but lifted my limp body and took me down to his lab. There, she described a ceremony; she said it was sacred and taboo. He inscribed a great circle with many symbols, and lay my body in the middle. The two of them then touched the edges of the circle with their fingers, and my body was brought to life. But, it couldn't have been my body, she said, and she realized the reason that ceremony was forbidden to all. She said they carried my remains, that shrieked and cried like an infant, and my father instructed her to feed me the _red stones_. She told of my transformation from a blob-like mass, with bones and a gaping mouth, to a child just like myself.

I was terrified. I fled from the room where I had spent many years, and ran down the hall of this mystery mansion. On my way, I was distracted by the figure of a young boy, running with me. I realized that it was a mirror that spread down the long hallway. I pressed my hand to it. I was alive, truly. My face hadn't changed like my mothers, and it was just like before I ate that goo. But as I walked closer, taking a careful look at my reflection, I was horrified again. My reflection gazed back at me with purple eyes, not gold, and the pupils were slits like a cat or a lizard. I might have screamed again.

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Please Review -; 


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